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Friendship 7 - Mercury/Atlas in 1/144?


Kushan_Farsight

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Good afternoon chaps. 
Now all my stash is easily accessible ive been looking at my Airfix Vostok 1 kit, and was quite pleased to see it can be made up as Soyuz, Luna or the Vostok configuration.  For now i am planning on doing it as the box shows, as a Vostok 1 configuration. 

 

I tend to do side-by-sides with all my builds  (Spitfire next to BF-109, Mig and F-16 etc) and this would be a nice one to put side by side with the first american equivalent mission, Friendship 7, using the Mercury/Atlas configuration.

 


What i am looking for and what a certain large online retailer and large online auction site have failed to reveal, is if it is possible to get such a kit, and if so, in 1/144 scale to match its soviet counterpart.  

 

Ideally in injection form, not resin or vacumform if possible. 

 

I can get this in 3d printed format, but scaled for 1/60 - so i am not sure how much detail will be lost/possible once shrunk down to the 1/144 scale. 3D Printing is cool and i have about 20 3d printed model rockets in various states, but i would like to keep this  'kit based' if at all possible.

Thanks in advance!  

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Was going to suggest Horizon Models, but their Mercury stuff is 1/72. They have both the Atlas and the Redstone, and you can build virtually any config of either I think.

 

I've built a Mercury-Redstone and a Gemini-Titan from New Ware in 1/144, and enjoyed it, despite them being resin kits, and the fact that I, like you, am not a huge fan of resin kits.

 

Friendship7 is available as kit NW046 from here https://mek.kosmo.cz/newware/. Links to builds and reviews there, too.

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You are going to have to decide what floats your boat better, scale or media.

 

Scale: Real Space Models produce a 1/144 Mecury/Atlas in resin.

 

Media: Horizon make the Mercury/Atlas in in injection moulded styrene - the scale is however, 1/72.

 

Tommo.

Edited by The Tomohawk Kid
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Cheers guys! 

A few options here for me now! I think for the moment i will stick with the 1/144 scale of the Airfix Vostok already in my possession and possibly 3D print the mercury-atlas.

 

First thing is to finish the Vostok and actually see if i enjoy building it! If its a real joy i may just move up to 1/72 to keep from having another variation of scale, as the price difference between getting both an R-7 and Titan in 1/72 vs them both in 1/144 is not as big as i was expecting! 

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The Airfix A-2 kit is inaccurate in that it's too slender. Despite Mat Irvine's efforts they wouldn't retool it as they did with the Apollo CSM in the Saturn kits - it was based on early information and they didn't even know what those lumps were on the Soyuz shroud (they're flaps that fold down in the case of a launch abort) so they're somewhat shapeless. Not doing Airfix down here, they did the best they could from what they could gather fifty years ago, but it's a shame they haven't updated the kit. How many more Spitfire variants do we need? I know, I know, a Spitfire kit will sell vastly more units than a space kit but we space modellers would bite their hand off if they offered it.

 

All of this is leading up to say that if you can get hold of an Apex kit the proportions of the launch vehicle are far more accurate.

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There are more accurate 1/144 Vostok/Soyuz kits around today if you want a more up to date rendition.

 

The old Revell Mercury/Atlas can still look nice - even if it was produced in a typical "odd" box-scale.

 

4RNNnH6D.jpg

 

RDwiK8IS.jpg

 

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On 21/12/2019 at 17:35, GordonD said:

The Airfix A-2 kit is inaccurate in that it's too slender. Despite Mat Irvine's efforts they wouldn't retool it as they did with the Apollo CSM in the Saturn kits - it was based on early information and they didn't even know what those lumps were on the Soyuz shroud

 

All of this is leading up to say that if you can get hold of an Apex kit the proportions of the launch vehicle are far more accurate.

 

Airfix based their kit (Mk 1 eyeball and photos) of a mock up the Soviets brought to the 1968 Paris airshow.

 

Agreed, the Apex kit or any of its repops is the way to go.

 

Tommo.

Edited by The Tomohawk Kid
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  • 7 months later...
7 hours ago, GordonD said:

The new (September) issue of Airfix Model World has a build of a resin Mercury/Atlas in 1:144 scale.

 

Which kit, I'm intrigued?

 

I would have thought the 1/72 Horizon IM kit would have been the one to go for. Even in 72 the Atlas Mercury combo its far from massive.

 

Tommo

Edited by The Tomohawk Kid
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On 8/8/2020 at 8:40 AM, Eric Mc said:

It's a Mike Grant build - so is excellent (although in the article he does call the capsule a "Gemini" capsule by mistake 😀) 

I spotted that. Just a typo though.

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  • 1 month later...

Does anyone know of a Vostok rocket in 1/200? I found one on Shapeways but wondered if there was a kit anywhere. I have the AMT man in space set plus the Hasegawa full stack but it'd be cool to have the Russian rocket in the same scale.

 

Meanwhile I have that "Everything is Go" set, the re-pop from Atlantis, and it's high on my list for building soon. 

 

 

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